Sustainable embodied experience in the built environment: reinterpreting architectural history through embodied cognition
ISSN: 2631-6862
Article publication date: 19 April 2022
Issue publication date: 20 October 2022
Abstract
Purpose
Architectural history is the fundamental resource that informs the essence of architecture and design thinking; however, education does not appear to link history to design thinking. A study of architectural history textbooks reveals the inadequacy of relying on the modern paradigm and architecture's typology of styles and periods. Instead, conceptual metaphor theory is recommended as the framework for understanding architectural history from an experiential approach. This study aims to complement architectural history by a new understanding of embodied cognition in generating paradigm change.
Design/methodology/approach
This study reviewed architectural history through changing body metaphors in terms of embodied experience. The study examined three different metaphorical structures of the body – nature, machine and neural network – projected on the built environment and experienced in accordance with three periods of architectural history, which are categorized as before modern, modern and after modern.
Findings
As a result of the case study, ancient pyramids can attain more empirical meaning as playful spaces than abstract forms, Greek temples as social spaces than symbolic spaces, medieval churches as atmospheric spaces than visually-centric spaces, modern residential buildings as unsustainable machines and contemporary parks as raising awareness of sustainable environment.
Originality/value
Therefore, this article contributes to understandings and knowledge of how built environments are experienced from the perspective of a neural network, to the development of a pedagogical alternative to traditional architectural history, to linking architectural history to design and practice to re-establish the importance and vitality of architectural history and finally to creating a sustainable didactic.
Keywords
Acknowledgements
This work was supported by the National Research Foundation of Korea (NRF) and grant funded by the Korea Government(MSIT) (No. 2022R1G1A1003663).
Citation
Lee, S. (2022), "Sustainable embodied experience in the built environment: reinterpreting architectural history through embodied cognition", Archnet-IJAR, Vol. 16 No. 3, pp. 620-636. https://doi.org/10.1108/ARCH-10-2021-0298
Publisher
:Emerald Publishing Limited
Copyright © 2022, Emerald Publishing Limited